It all started on March 13th 1998, at the L. Ron Hubbard birthday celebration in Los Angeles. Mark Ingber, a Churchof Scientology official, announced that Scientologists would be given an opportunity to sell Scientology books andrecruit for Scientology through nearly-identical promotional websites (getting 10% of the money that these recruitsend up spending in Scientology, but that's another story). To put up one of these sites, a Scientologist has to sign acontract. Here's a short excerpt from that contract:"If you wish to use this authorization regarding the Marks and the Works, you must:...(6) agree to use the specific Internet Filter Program that CSI [Church of Scientology International Incorporated] hasprovided to you which allows you freedom to view other sites on Dianetics, Scientology or its principals withoutthreat of accessing sites deemed to be using the Marks or Works in an unauthorized fashion or deemed to be improperor discreditable to the Scientology religion;""Deemed improper or discreditable", eh? Boy, aren't Scientologists lucky to have someone there to decide for themwhat facts about their religion they can and cannot see. If they didn't use this filter, they might find out about thesuspicious deaths in Scientology and the uncomplimentary things that judges have said about Scientology. Can't haveScientologists finding out the ugly facts behind Scientology, can they? So, Scientology tries, through this internetfilter, to prevent its members from reading negative information about Scientology on the internet.This internet filter does 4 things to words and websites that Scientology doesn't like:The filter blocks a list of websites. Anyone with the filter installed can't access these websites, AT ALL. Examples ofblocked sites include: http://www.xenu.net,http://www.entheta.net,http://www.lermanet.com, all websitescontaining information the "Church" of Scientology doesn't want its members to see.The filter blocks a list of newsgroups. Anyone with the filter installed can't access these newsgroups, AT ALL. Someof these blocked newsgroups include: alt.religion.scientology, alt.support.ex-cult. Since scientology claims it's not acult, why would it need to block an ex-cult newsgroup?The filter blocks a list of words, that will be removed from a web page or email message. Some words blocked lead toodd combinations: NOTs and Anima are blocked, so "I'm not sure that animal is healthy" gets changed to "I'm ure thatl is healthy". Other words blocked are peoples' names: Deana Holmes (a critic of Scientology), Bob Minton (anothercritic of Scientology, who appeared recently on NBC's Dateline). Why does Scientology try to prevent its membersfrom reading about these people? What does Scientology have to hide?The filter has another list of words, that will stop an internet page from loading, or kick a user from an IRC channel(remove him from the discussion). If the filtered computer sees one of these words, the computer will stop receivingdata through the present connection. These words include: Entheta (refers to http://www.entheta.net), xenu, FishmanAffadavit, Bare Faced Messiah (a critical book on Scientology, in the Books on the Net section athttp://www.xenu.net).These words and websites are only some of the terms blocked by the Scientology internet filter. The whole list can befound at: http://www.taniwha.com/crack.list.htmlSome information sources, for further reading:Operation Clambake: http://www.xenu.net (Lots of information!)Canadian Critical Scientology Information: http://xenu.caOccupied Clearwater: http://www.xenu-city.netDeaths in Scientology: www.b-org.demon.nlChurch of Scientology Censors Net Access for Members: http://www.xenu.net/archive/events/censorship/

[end of copy and paste. N.B. this docu is available as a pdf download and is meant for distribution.]

In case any of you have been dead, drugged beyond recognition, or doing mundane things like working-- as a public service-- I am providing a brief synopsis of recent events. The Church of Scientology is considered to be a cult by some [including Germany] and has been blamed for a handful of deaths. A vid of Tom Cruise (remember him?) appeared on You Tube briefly. The Church of Scientology or someone over there didn't like this. Believing the appearance of this vid to be a violation of copyright, a takedown order was issued. Some pissed-off hactivists known individually and collectively as Anonymous or Anon declared a sort of internet war. This internet war apparently involved D.D.O.S attacks, faxes, and phone calls. Leafleting has also been carried out in select cities and more actions protests are slated for February 10th or thereabouts.

Warren Buffett approves of these goings-on and so do I. Sure, I am anti-censorship. And the folks of scientology have a legal right to publish their ideas. Protesting has a noble history. It is through protesting that some things get done. The message gets out. The meme gets around. The stuff gets to go surfing electronically. Well, okay some of the stuff that Anon is doing might border on illegal or might be illegal. I am not a cop, lawyer, or judge. Some other folks will have to decide all of that stuff later on maybe. Meanwhile, in retaliation at least one site where Anon hangs out was attacked in turn by an organization calling itself "The Regime." That particular site is now back up and in service as of this posting.

My sources are below. Many of them support Anon. At least one doesn't. And several are official scientology sites, as far as I can tell. Adding .nyud.net/ to the url will cause any that are loading slowly to speed up. spike

I have been bouncing around online for just about 20 years, so I have been there and have done that. It doesn't mean I didn't like it and wouldn't do it again. As most humans, I am a social animal. To be a social animal on the internet it is social media that binds us all together. I prefer Google + and Twitter but have pages on the other ones that I ignore, so you probably should too.

My Blogging

I blog a lot. If you don't like people that blog a lot then I don't know how you got here to begin with. You may want to just move along.

Contrary to popular opinion I hate politics, but have political opinions ..

The easiest way to get under my skin is to apply the "all you talk about is politics" tag. This is a common knee jerk reaction some have when they see something political, and unfortunately I don't hold back sometimes. As a matter of fact, I share more about health, fitness and blogging than politics, which you would know if you weren't busy dismissing me. I actually follow and interact with more people that disagree with me than agree with me politically. The list of "other than politics" seems to be growing everyday and it probably looks a lot like this: